Prague, Berlin, and the beginnings of a long stay in Portugal

So I did Prague in a day. I can't decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I found the city very overrun with tourists, and I spent the day dodging maniacs on segways. However it was a beautiful city. I feel like if I had had more time I would have been less rushed to see the typical tourist sites and could have explored and found the funky local neighborhoods that appeal to me much more. So here are some pictures of Prague. 

John Lennon wall

I thought the locks were just a Paris thjng but I've been seeing them everywhere. 

View from the Charles Bridge

This is the astronomical clock and about 1/27493738 of the people who were gathered around it. 

I hate to complain about tourists because technically I was a tourist. But I wasn't on a Segway or taking pictures with an iPad and I definitely wasn't so oblivious of my surroundings that I was walking down the middle of the street that cars were driving on and didn't hear or chose to ignore their honking. Also someone asked me for directions in Czech so I like to think I blended in. 

Next I headed to Berlin. This is a city I had been wanting to visit for a very long time. My hostel situation was a bit interesting because the lobby was a bar. Not like the lobby had a bar in it; the bar had a reception desk in it. And a friend I made in Budapest was in Berlin at the same time so I automatically had someone to hang out with. There was a free walking tour that started at my hostel. I had an awesome guide and I saw the major historical sites my first full day there. For example, Brandenburg Gate

The hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby out the window

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews (fun fact: this is not actually called the holocaust memorial. It is only dedicated to the murdered Jews. There areseparate  memorials for every group of people affected...homosexuals, gypsies, burned books, etc)

And Checkpoint Charlie

After the tour, I visited the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall. It is over a mile long and decorated with beautiful graffiti. 

Heheheh Pink Floyd

That night I also did a bar crawl. I think Berlin really appealed to me because it is a huge mash up of very blatant history and very modern, hip, European culture. Berlin is infamous for the tragedies that have happened in the city, but it is also a very vibrant city with a very active nightlife. My tour guide earlier in the day explained that Germans are hesitant to feel national pride. For example, at American sporting events, it is commonplace, even encouraged, for attendees to wear red white and blue and carry American flags. This is taboo for Germans because what we see as patriotism is interpreted as German nationalism, which has much more sinister connotation. I also found it interesting that German school children are required to visit three concentrations camps during their school career. 

Which I did the next day. I took a tour of Sachsenhaussen. This was a work camp, not a death camp. I found it very eery and emotional. I also didn't feel right taking pictures at the place where so many horrible things happened. These are the pictures I did take. 

If a prisoner stepped over the line I to the gravel, the guards shot to kill. 

This is at the site of the gas chambers and rooms where countless prisoners were shot. Sachsenhaussen used carbon monoxide instead of cyanide so the gas chambers weren't used very many times. Instead, a process was created where prisoners were put through a fake medical exam and then shot in the back of the neck through a hole in the wall. Prisoners were also loaded onto trucks where the exhaust was pumped back into where they were loaded and killed that way. 

The next day I saw drunk Australians get detained by metro police for mooning incoming trains and some stupid white girls get yelled at in German for doing cartwheels across the tops of the stones of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. It was terrifying, but also very satisfying. The girls were visibly shaken. 

Also don't believe what anyone says. Berlin public transportation is a nightmare and a mess and incredibly confusing. 

One last interesting thing. These are called stumbling stones. They are spread across Europe in front of places of residence where people were deported during the Holocaust. They are very simple, just names, the site to which they were deported, and he death date if it is known, but I think they are a very powerful way to remind people of what happened in the past. 

And now I am back in Lisbon, one off favorite cities in the world. I rented an apartment through airbnb so I had the opportunity to sleep in a room by myself. I have also grown weary of having the same superficial conversation over and over again. "What's your name?" "How long are you staying here?" "Wher elsee are you traveling to?"  It was great to meet so many people and hear their stories, but I just wanted the chance to not have to talk to anyone for many many hours. 

Today I took a train to Sintra and visited the Palace Pena. It is built high up on a hill over the city and was used by several different rulers. 

It was also foggy and cool up on the hill which was so welcome. 

That is actually 2-D. It is painted to look like carved stone. 

The palace was beautiful, but I enjoyed the gardens more. After being in so many different big cities, it was nice to be in large amounts of green stuff.  This is Cruz Alta, at the highest point of Sintra hills. 

The palace in the distance. 

So tomorrow I am meeting up with everyone else and heading to Mira de Aire for field season. I have been very carefree and structureless for the past three weeks and that is all about to come to a crashing halt. But I am definitely looking forward to it. 

Vienna and the Czech Republic

I realized this morning that I have been out of the country for 17 days. In these two and half weeks, I've covered a lot of ground, especially in the past few days.

But let's start with Vienna. I was very fortunate to have a friend to stay with for a night in this beautiful city. The first afternoon I took a long walk around the city and saw the major sites.  I climbed up 343 steps to get these aerial views of the city from St. Stephen's Cathedral. 

I also took a tour of the catacombs and had to break the rules and take a picture of these bones. Thefe are many more rooms filled with even more bones. 

I also visited the Hofburn and City Hall. 

I learned that this is the site where Vienna surrendered to Hitler and welcomed him in to the country. I found it interesting that Austria was treated as a victim when creating the peace treaties after the war was over. This is city hall. The city has a "music festival" every year where old black and white movies, classical concerts, operas, etc. are shown on a giant screen. I watched Fantasia, which was very appropriate for a city known for its classical music. 

The next day, I checked into a hostel, explored the city a bit more and put on my only nice outfit to see a classical concert. The concert hall was filled almost entirely with tour buses of the elderly but I still found the music and the opera and ballet accompaniments very enjoyable. The next day I spent several hours at the Natural Hostory Museum. It was awesome. I particularly enjoyed the displays on human evolution. 

The next day, I traveled to Pilsen, Czech Republic to visit my friend Lenka who I met doing archaeology in Portugal last year. 

First thing the next morning, we traveled across the country to the Brno area to a concert, Crimson Projekt. We had quite a lot of difficulty getting there.  But after a missed connection and having to turn around because we were on the wrong train, we finally made it to the concert, which was very enjoyable. That night we camped on a hill in a nature preserve overlooking the city of Brno. 

We checked into a hostel in Brno and did some exploring. We visited a beautiful church and the ossuary beneath it. 

We also drank some delicious Moravian wine. I always associated the Czech Republic with beer, but the Moravia region is very famous for their wine. Without the wine, I think I would have perished in the heat. 

The next day, we traveled without incident back to Pilsen and were too tired and hot and miserable to do anything that night. 

And now I am on a bus to Prague. I am excited to explore another Czech city and then to head off to Berlin Wednesday. 

Miss you all!  

All roads lead to Szimpla

Let me begin this post by saying that Budapest is the most unique city I have ever been to. It is a beautiful, old city with a ton of history, but it is also very modern and funky at the same time. My hostel was located in the old Jewish quarter which now the party quarter. I was a little nervous when I first landed on Budapest for a few reasons. The biggest being how foreign the language is. Most words were 12 letters long and at least 5 of them had accents. For example, the word for baggage claim is poggyászkiadás. I also think I got a bit of a bad first impression of the city because the airport is on the very outskirts and I had to travel through some ramshackle areas to get into the city center. I was also legitimately worried that my metro car was going to go flying off the tracks. But as soon as I walked up the steps into Budapest, I realized I had no reason to be nervous. Everyone was incredibly helpful and cheerful.  Plus it's always fun to pay for your meal with a 10000 note. 

After I checked into my hostel (which was the best hostel ever. If you ever go to Budapest, stay at Maverick City Lodge) I took a long walk through the city. I walked past the Great Synagogue (I visited it for real and went inside later) and then over the Chain Bridge and up to Buda Castle and Fisherman's Bastion. The castle and the bastion are located on top of a giant hill on the Buda side of the city. I had an incredible view of the Parliament building and the Danube flowing past Pest.

  I was staying in Budapest by myself, so I was very lucky to make friends in the hostel very quickly. On Thursday, my new friend and I took a walk through the city's cemetery. We were actually on a hunt for my great great grandfather, but weren't successful. We didn't find him, but the cemetery was very interesting. There were giant tombs and some with some very unconventional statues on them. 

Later that afternoon, we took a journey outside of the city to Memento Park. This is an outdoor museum where all the statues from Budapest's communist and soviet past were displayed. I really appreciated this Park because I am very interested in this period of history. I also think it is very important to educate every day people on the terrible things that happened in the past so they aren't repeated. 

Thursday night, our hostel had a pub crawl. We tasted palinka, a traditional Hungarian plum alcohol. Our first stop was a bar called Szimpla. Szimpla is the third best bar in the world and the best ruin bar in Budapest. Ruin bars are unique to Budapest. Many of them are underground and they all have unique decorations. Szimpla is actually 7 bars in one. The space is divided up into several rooms all filled with mismatched furniture and weird knickknacks. There are also cars and bathtubs to sit in. 

Friday was a much less lighthearted day for me. First, I visited the great synagogue. This is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. It was incredibly beautiful inside, but also filled with tragic history.

The Jewish people of Budapest were terribly mistreated during WWII. The synagogue had a good museum dedicated to the horrors they suffered. This is a memorial to those who lost their lives during WWII. 

The synagogue also has a genealogy project. Unfortunately, when I visited it was closed, so I wasn't able to look for my ancestors. 

After the synagogue, I went to the Terror House. This is a museum in the house that housed the headquarters for the political police during the communist regimes, as well as the jail cells for political prisoners. the history was very interesting, and equally distressing. 

We had another night out, which of course ended up at Szimpla. The next day was spent at the thermal baths. This was the perfect way to destress and detoxify. We visited every pool and every sauna. Friday night we had an awesome dinner (tacos! And guacamole!) and had one last drink at Szimpla. 

Today, I took my first train ride. Now I am in Bratislava, Slovakia for the night. It's a small, quiet city, especially compared to Budapest, but it's nice to relax before I head off to Vienna in the morning. 

As a side note, this is a bit of a rambling thought I've been having the past few days. When I set off on my adventure, I thought I was being really, well, adventurous. Along the way I have met people who have quit their jobs in order to travel for five months. I also met a girl who was going to Bosnia and Serbia after she left Budapest. I'm incredibly grateful that I have this opportunity to travel, but I've also been thinking about how big the world really is, and how little I am going to see in my 23 days of traveling. 

Also, I'm pretty bummed that my passport isn't getting stamped because every country in visiting is in the EU. But I guess that's just a really big first world problem. 

Spain thus far

The journey to Spain wasn't easy, but after a 3 hour delay and a sleepless plane flight, I finally made it. I am very fortunate to be able to stay with family friends so I have an expert to show me around the city and people my age to go out with. 

On Friday, we went into Barcelona and saw some sights. We visited two houses designed by Gaudí, an archaeological site, and the Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar.  Later that night, we went to the town square of Terrassa and watched drum lines perform. There also dragons with firecrackers on them and fire breathers. 

On Saturday, I experienced an amazing Catalon cultural event. Teams of people competed to build the highest and most difficult towers. The towers were constructed by standing on top of each other's shoulders and climbing up. They were 8 or 9 people tall. When the whole tower is constructed, a little girl has to climb up one side and down the other. There were three teams competing. 

Today, I went back into Barcelona. I saw Gaudí's personal house but couldn't go in because it was closed. Then we walked down to the marina and saw a giant statue of Christopher Columbus pointing towards the West Indies (America). Next we went to Segrada Família. It was hands down the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I was genuinely speechless. 

I have one more day in Spain and then I'm off to Budapest. 

The streets of Barcelona

El Born archaeological site

Castello human tower building competition 

Christopher Columbus pointing towards America

The outside of Segrada Família

The ceiling of Segrada Família. Gaudí  was inspired by nature and designed the inside to look like a forest.